I wrenched the wheel around again and managed a U-turn away from the shooter and toward Rodney and his Mercedes sedan. I slithered around him, but just as I thought I was home free, he shot out the Pathfinder’s rear tires. I bumped down the road on rims. In the rearview mirror, I saw him get back into the Mercedes and come after me.
Oncoming traffic honked at me or at the sedan blocking the right lane, but no one stopped to see what was going on. Too much MYOB, just like Mrs. Murdstone had said this afternoon.
I jumped from the car at Lake and sprinted toward the L steps. I’d almost made it when a figure in black outran me and pulled me down. I rolled over and away, got in a crouch, gun out, but someone else came from behind and hit me on the side of the head.
35 Send in the Marines
I never really lost consciousness. Someone pinned my arms behind me. I tried to fight free, but I was woozy, moving slowly, a dream figure. Another someone stuck his hands inside my sweater, feeling my skin. I kicked backward, connected with a boot, not a leg, and the groping hand pinched me hard, then flung me to the ground. I twisted to the side, trying to scrabble away.
“Where is it?” Rodney Treffer was looming over me in the dark. His breath stank of too many beers.
“What?” I kicked at his kneecap.
I was sluggish, and he moved away easily, kicking me in the stomach as he came back at me.
“Don’t get cute with me, girlie, I know you have it.”
Someone came up and seized my feet. Called to another thug. Two or three others were in the background, I couldn’t see.
Rodney bent close to my head, grabbed my hair. “Where is it?”
The Body Artist’s computer. I couldn’t remember if it had still been in the front seat when I got into the Pathfinder.
“AIDS, you mean?” I said. “Swine flu? Is that what you think I have?”
He let go of my hair and punched at my face, but I moved my head in time, and he hit my coat shoulder. Good job, V.I. Not dead yet.
“We know you took it, bitch! Where is it?”
He kicked me in the stomach, and I threw up. The hold on my feet eased, and I bucked and twisted away from Rodney’s oncoming boot. He lost his footing, slipped in my vomit, fell hard, head bouncing against the ice.
I rolled over to the L steps, clutched the rail, and tried to hoist myself upright. The thugs grabbed me before I could get to my feet. I dropped to the stairs and kicked out hard with my right leg, smacking one in the midriff. His motorcycle jacket took most of the impact, but he couldn’t punch without exposing his stomach to another kick. His companion tried to circle around me from the other side, but the stairwell kept him at bay. I prayed for a train.
“Your kneecaps,” a cold voice spoke from behind my attackers. “My gun is trained on them. Get up, come with me, or forget about ever walking again.”
It was the rumbly-voiced man who’d been in command at Club Gouge last night. I got up.
“Ludwig, Konstantin, bring her to me.”
The two grabbed me and shoved me toward the voice. The gun barrel looked cold and gray under the thin light of the streetlamp. The man holding it was tall, with a fur hat adding another few inches. When he smiled at me, the streetlamp glinted on his gold teeth.
The roar of an oncoming train drowned whatever he started to say. He gestured with his head, and the men holding me shoved me forward into the backseat of the Mercedes sedan. They sat on either side of me, pinning me to the seat, while the commander got into the front next to the driver. Nobody paid any attention to Rodney, who was still lying on the sidewalk near the stairs.
“Tell me where you are hiding it.” The rumbler’s voice filled the car.
I shook my head. “It’s Anton Kystarnik, isn’t it? If I knew what you were looking for, it would be easier for me to tell you where it was.”
“Don’t play games with me, Warshawska. I can make you talk.”
The softness of his voice was more frightening than Rodney’s loud shouts. “I’m sure you can. Torture can make anyone talk. It just can’t make you tell the truth about stuff you never heard of.”
“Maybe it can help you remember, though.”
I didn’t say anything. A third-degree street fighter? I’d been flattering myself. The train pulled in, and four people climbed down the L stairs. I looked at them helplessly through the Mercedes’ smoky windows. They stepped around Rodney-I suppose he looked like a drunk they couldn’t bear to touch, lying there in my vomit and all.
“What were you doing at Olympia’s club tonight?” Anton asked.
“Looking for the Body Artist. Karen Buckley. You know her? She’s disappeared.”
Anton laughed, an ugly sound. “Don’t worry yourself about little Karen. She knows how to look after herself, first and last. Don’t imagine her as the scared little girl she pretends to be.”
“Yes,” I said, “I know you and she go way back, back to when Zina was still alive. Why did she change her name?”
“She was thinking she could hide from me, but no one is that smart or that lucky. When I want to find them, they get found.”
“So you know where she is now?”
“I don’t care where she is now.”
“What about her website? You don’t care about that anymore?”
Anton laughed again, this time more loudly, almost like an operatic stage laugh. “I fixed that problem. Now you are my new problem. Why are you caring about these people?”
In the warmth of the car, I was starting to feel the place in my abdomen where Rodney had kicked me.
“Which people?” I tried to sound alert, but I could tell that my voice was thick with fatigue. I tried to imagine how Anton would react if I simply fell asleep. He wouldn’t like it, I decided.
“These stupid Mexican girls who get themselves killed, in Iraq, in Chicago.”
Konstantin and Ludwig were watching Anton, and Anton had his back to the street. I didn’t tell them someone hiding behind the L stairs was stretching an arm out to dig into Rodney’s pockets.
“Get themselves killed? Is that like getting yourself pregnant all alone with a turkey baster in the basement? They stand in front of someone like you who’s holding a gun and say, ‘Shoot me’?”
Anton thought that was funny. “These girls are behaving like that. ‘Shoot me. Blow me up,’ maybe they should all wear signs, put that message on them. Now, you will tell me where you are hiding the papers.”
The figure had disappeared from the L stairs. Through the Mercedes’ whisper-proof windows, I could just hear another train roaring in, and then a loud report, right below us. A second shot sounded. The driver floored the accelerator, but halfway down the block, the sedan spun to the right and slammed into an L girder. An oncoming car honked furiously and swerved out of the way.
Konstantin, or maybe Ludwig, opened his door. I put everything I had into my right shoulder, shoved against him hard enough to knock him out of the car. I rolled over on the seat and followed him.
Three people were pounding toward us up the middle of Lake Street. I got to my feet and swung my arms wildly. Behind me, I could hear the front door of the Mercedes open.
“Vic! Vic! Is that you?”
My cousin’s voice, high-pitched, terrified, more welcome than an angel just then.
I shouted to her to get out of the road, to get out of the way. “Anton has a gun. They all have guns. Get down!”
I was ducking behind a parked car as I shouted. A door opened in a building behind me. A couple of men in waiter’s aprons came outside to smoke. I yelled at my cousin that I was going into the building. A moment later, Petra arrived, with Tim Radke and another man, one I didn’t recognize. All three were out of breath.
Inside, a jazz combo was playing an old Coltrane piece, or sawing at it. In the dim reddish light of the room, I saw that only half the tables were occupied and that no one was paying much attention to the music. A young man came up to us and asked if we wanted a table.
